In vain poets

fancy; although modified, the taste was to endure. rejected a part of the French alloy wherewith they had mixed their native metal; in vain they returned to the old unrhymed verses of Jonson and Shakspeare; in vain Dryden, in the parts of Antony, Ventidius, Octavia, Don Sebastian, and Dorax, recovered a portion of the old naturalness and energy; in vain Otway, who had real dramatic talent, Lee, or Southern attained a true or touching accent, so that once, in Venice Preserved, it was thought that the drama would be regenerated. The drama was dead, and tragedy could not replace it; or rather each one died by the other; and their union, which robbed them of strength in Dryden's time, enervated them also in the time of his successors. Literary style blunted dramatic truth; dramatic truth marred literary style; the work was neither sufficiently vivid nor sufficiently well written the author was too little of a poet or of an orator; he had neither Shakspeare's fire of imagination nor Racine's polish and art.1 He strayed on the boundaries of two dramas, and suited neither the half-barbarous men of art nor the well-polished men of the court. Such indeed was the audience, hesitating between two forms of thought, fed by two opposite civilisations. They had no longer the freshness of sense, the depth of impression, the bold originality and poetic folly of the cavaliers and adventurers of the Renaissance; nor will they ever acquire the aptness of speech, sweetness of manners, courtly habits, and cultivation of sentiment and thought which adorned the court of Louis XIV. They are quitting the age of solitary imagination and invention, which suits their race, for the age of reasoning and conversation, which does not suit their race: they lose their own merits, and do not acquire the merits of others. They were meagre poets and ill-bred courtiers, having lost the art of imagination and of good manners, at times dull or brutal, at times emphatic or stiff. For the production of fine poetry, race and age must concur. This race, diverging from its own age, and fettered at the outset by foreign imitation, formed its classical literature but slowly; it will only attain it after transforming its religious and political condition: the age will be that of English reason. Dryden inaugurates it by his other works, and the writers who appear in the reign of Queen Anne will give it its completion, its authority, and its splendour.

1.

But let us pause a moment longer to inquire whether, amid so many abortive and distorted branches, the old theatrical stock, abandoned by chance to itself, will not produce at some point a sound and living shoot. When a man like Dryden, so gifted, so well trained and experienced, works with a will, there is hope that he will some time succeed; and once, in part at least, Dryden did succeed. It would be treating him

'This impotence reminds one of Casimir Delavigne.

unjustly to be always comparing him with Shakspeare; but even on Shakspeare's ground, with the same materials, it is possible to create a fine work; only the reader must forget for a while the great inventor, the inexhaustible creator of vehement and original souls, and to consider the imitator on his own merits, without forcing an overwhelming comparison.

There is vigour and art in this tragedy of Dryden, All for Love. 'He has informed us, that this was the only play written to please himself." And he had really composed it learnedly, according to history and logic. And what is better still, he wrote it in a manly style. In the preface he says:

The fabric of the play is regular enough, as to the inferior parts of it; and the unities of time, place, and action, more exactly observed, than perhaps the English theatre requires. Particularly, the action is so much one, that it is the only of the kind without episode, or underplot; every scene in the tragedy conducing to the main design, and every act concluding with a turn of it.'

He did more; he abandoned the French ornaments, and returned to national tradition :

...

In my style I have professed to imitate the divine Shakspeare; which that I might perform more freely, I have disincumbered myself from rhyme. . . . Yet, I hope, I may affirm, and without vanity, that, by imitating him, I have excelled myself throughout the play; and particularly, that I prefer the scene betwixt Antony and Ventidius in the first act, to anything which I have written in this kind.'

Dryden was right; if Cleopatra is weak, if this feebleness of conception takes away the interest and mars the general effect, if the new rhetoric and the old emphasis at times suspend the emotion and destroy the likelihood, yet on the whole the drama stands erect, and what is more, moves on. The poet is skilful; he has planned, he knows how to construct a scene, to represent the internal struggle by which two passions contend for a human heart. We perceive the tragical vicissitude of the strife, the progress of a sentiment, the overthrow of obstacles, the slow growth of desire or wrath, to the very instant when the resolution, rising up of itself or seduced from without, rushes suddenly on one side. There are natural words; the poet thinks and writes too genuinely not to discover them at need. There are manly characters: he himself is a man; and beneath his courtier's pliability, his affectations as a fashionable poet, he has retained his stern and energetic character. Except for one scene of recrimination, his Octavia is a Roman matron; and when, even in Alexandria, in Cleopatra's palace, she comes to look for Antony, she does it with a simplicity and nobility, not to be surpassed. 'Cæsar's sister,' cries out Antony, accosting her. Octavia answers:

'That's unkind.

Had I been nothing more than Cæsar's sister,

1 See the introductory notice, by Sir Walter Scott, of All for Love, v. 290.

Know, I had still remain'd in Cæsar's camp:
But your Octavia, your much injured wife,

Though banish'd from your bed, driven from your house,
In spite of Cæsar's sister, still is yours.

"Tis true, I have a heart disdains your coldness,

And prompts me not to seek what you should offer;
But a wife's virtue still surmounts that pride.

I come to claim you as my own; to show

My duty first, to ask, nay beg, your kindness:

Your hand, my lord; 'tis mine, and I will have it.'1

Antony, humiliated, refuses the pardon Octavia has brought him, and tells her:

Subjects me still to your unkind mistakes.

But the conditions I have brought are such,

You need not blush to take: I love your honour,
Because 'tis mine; it never shall be said,
Octavia's husband was her brother's slave.
Sir, you are free; free, even from her you loath;
For, though my brother bargains for your love,
Makes me the price and cement of your peace,

I have a soul like yours; I cannot take

Your love as alms, nor beg what I deserve.

I'll tell my brother we are reconciled;

He shall draw back his troops, and you shall march

To rule the East: I may be dropt at Athens;

No matter where. I never will complain,

But only keep the barren name of wife,
And rid you of the trouble.'"

This is lofty; this woman has a proud heart, and also a wife's heart: she knows how to give and how to bear; and better, she knows how to sacrifice herself without self-assertion, and calmly; no vulgar mind conceived such a soul as this. And Ventidius, the old general, who with her and before her, comes to rescue Antony from his illusion and servitude, is worthy to speak in behalf of honour, as she had spoken for duty. Doubtless he was a plebeian, a rude and plain-speaking soldier, with the frankness and jests of his profession, sometimes clumsy, such as a clever eunuch can dupe, 'a thick-skulled hero,' who, out of simplicity of soul, from the coarseness of his training, unsuspectingly brings Antony back to the meshes, which he seemed to be breaking through. Falling into a trap, he tells Antony that he has seen Cleopatra unfaithful with Dolabella:

'Antony. My Cleopatra ?

Ventidius. Your Cleopatra.
Dolabella's Cleopatra.

Every man's Cleopatra.

Antony. Thou liest.

Ventidius. I do not lie, my lord.

Is this so strange? Should mistresses be left,
And not provide against a time of change?

You know she's not much used to lonely nights.''

It was just the way to make Antony jealous, and bring him back furious to Cleopatra. But what a noble heart has this Ventidius, and how we catch, when he is alone with Antony, the man's voice, the deep tones which had been heard on the battlefield! He loves his general like a good dog, and asks no better than to die, so it be at his master's feet. He growls ominously on seeing him cast down, crouches round him, and suddenly weeps:

'Ventidius. Look, emperor, this is no common dew.

I have not wept this forty years; but now

My mother comes afresh into my eyes,

I cannot help her softness.

Antony. By Heaven, he weeps! poor, good old man, he weeps!

The big round drops course one another down

The furrows of his cheeks.-Stop them, Ventidius,

Or I shall blush to death: they set my shame,

That caused them, full before me.

Ventidius. I'll do my best.

Antony. Sure there's contagion in the tears of friends:

For my own griefs, but thine. Nay, father!'

As we hear these terrible sobs, we think of Tacitus' veterans, who, escaping from the marshes of Germany, with scarred breasts, white heads, limbs stiff with service, kissed the hands of Drusus, carried his fingers to their gums, that he might feel their worn and loosened teeth, incapable to bite the wretched bread which was given to them:

'No; 'tis you dream; you sleep away your hours

In desperate sloth, miscall'd philosophy.

Up, up, for honour's sake; twelve legions wait you,
And long to call you chief: By painful journies,
I led them, patient both of heat and hunger,
Down from the Parthian marshes to the Nile.

"Twill do you good to see their sun-burnt faces,

Their scarr'd cheeks, and chopt hands; there's virtue in them.

They'll sell those mangled limbs at dearer rates

Than yon trim bands can buy."

And when all is lost, when the Egyptians have turned traitors, and

there is nothing left but to die well, Ventidius says:

1 All for Love, 4. 1.

2 Ibid. 1. 1.

3 Ibid.

For, I have seen him in such various shapes,

I care not which I take: I'm only troubled.

The life I bear is worn to such a rag,

"Tis scarce worth giving. I could wish, indeed,

We threw it from us with a better grace;

That, like two lions taken in the toils,

We might at least thrust out our paws, and wound

The hunters that inclose us.'...

Antony begs him to go, but he refuses:

'Antony. Do not deny me twice.

Ventidius. By Heaven I will not.

Let it not be to outlive you.

Antony. Kill me first,

And then die thou; for 'tis but just thou serve

Thy friend, before thyself.

Ventidius. Give me your hand.

We soon shall meet again. Now, farewell, emperor !

... I will not make a business of a trifle :

And yet I cannot look on you, and kill you.
Pray, turn your face.

Antony. I do: strike home, be sure.

Ventidius. Home, as my sword will reach.'2

And with one blow he kills himself. These are the tragic, stoical manners of a military monarchy, the great profusion of murders and sacrifices wherewith the men of this overturned and shattered society killed and died. This Antony, for whom so much has been done, is not undeserving of their love: he has been one of Cæsar's heroes, the first soldier of the van; kindness and generosity breathe from him to the last; if he is weak against a woman, he is strong against men; he has the muscles and heart, the wrath and passions of a soldier; it is this heat of blood, this too quick sentiment of honour, which has caused his ruin; he cannot forgive his own crime; he possesses not that lofty genius which, dwelling in a region superior to ordinary rules, emancipates a man from hesitation, from discouragement and remorse; he is only a soldier, he cannot forget that he has not executed the orders given to him:

Ventidius. Emperor !

Antony. Emperor? Why, that's the style of victory;
The conquering soldier, red with unfelt wounds,

Salutes his general so; but never more

Shall that sound reach my ears.